drugs

The fact that alcohol prohibition was legalized during the great depression is an important lesson. But there’s a huge difference between drinking a few beers and shooting up heroine.

However, it’s fair to say that legalizing drugs has not been tried. There is a slew of questions surrounding the practicality of such a drastic change in policy, but I wholeheartedly agree that our drug policy in the united states is puritanical and draconian.

Questions I’d have:

What would be the deterministic health consequences? Would the toll on the psyche and well-being of society be too much if we trusted people to control themselves?

How can you weigh the benefits of reducing the power of drug cartels with the increase in DUI deaths and personal losses for people who will battle addiction?

Would this even increase the amount of abusers? People who gamble find ways to gamble, people who do drugs already find ways to do it — is it a myth that everyone would suddenly rush to do drugs?

I think the argument against legalization is based largely on precedent and less on metrics — since a lot of it is just speculation. I don’t have many doubts that we’d be able to save money and increase revenue drastically at the same time — and we could channel a small percentage of funds to education, support and rehab instead of spending so much on enforcement and incarceration.